I love working with SE, but.....

[T1936]

Hi all,

I am using SE 19 now, but I've been working with SE since ver 11 and overall I find it is a great, solid tool that leaves almost nothing to be desired. Well, almost...

Wondering if others find the following quirks a nuisance like I do. Feel free to add your own, or workarounds if you have any, which will be useful to all of us.

1. My main beef, and constant pain in the neck, the "Move/Copy" button when moving or copying an item. Don't know if I am the only one, but I constantly forget to check it one way or the other, and always, after an extensive selection process, find it didn't copy, or, it did. Drives me nuts! Would love to see separate "move" and "copy" icon.

2. Lack of a polygon select. OK, I know it is there now, but only with the select tool, and not with the copy/move tool, which adds an extra step to the process.

3. A delete button. Instead of a two click process. To delete a series of lines one has to first select the item, then press the delete key to remove it. Would be great to have a single tool that you simply click on the item and it is gone. This can be done with the trim tool, but it has a nasty habit of trimming, instead of removing the entire entity.

4. An offset line tool that removes the original line. Man, I sure could use a tool that does this. I offset lines often with the type of work I do, and do not need the original line afterward, which means an extra step to go in an delete the line. (See item 3...) I know there are options like coloring the lines and using Smartselect, but that is an extra step that could be eliminated.

5. The lack of a perpendicular relationship when rotating items. This one really sticks in my craw! Try drawing a rectangle on an angle, select it and rotate it perpendicularly to another line. The perpendicular handle will not activate. I have yet to figure out why this option disappeared after ver. 15.

6. Lack of a polygon tool. Why? Don't we all have to draw polygons often? Why is this missing?

Yes, Solid Edge is a great piece of software, but could be much better with a few simple changes.

Anyone else find these issues irritating?

Tim

 

[donyoung]

Hi,


1) Move/Copy

this also pertains to Mirror/Rotate. It would suffice
when the cursor would change appearence or displays a C
or M adjacent to it just to indicate the actual operation

2) yes, would be fine

3) delete

for this you can use
- select the line
- RMB --> cut
which is easier (single handed operation ;-)

4) yes, could be done in a similar fashion like 1)

5) yes, but maybe it's back in V20. I circumvent by placing a
perpendicular relationship later on

6) a looong standing whish. The only outcome was a polygon macro
in \custom :-( Even low cost 2d/3D CADs have it (V20 ?)


Added

7) drawing a line at an angle but the angle to be relative to
another line like the line option ACAD (LT) offers

8) new features should be *complete* and and *reviewed* before
they are released (latest items that failed in this matter:
printing to .pdf, PMI and section views, ...)

Rumors:

the difficulty to select certain keypoints i.e. endpoint coincident
with a centerpoint seems to undergo an change in design with V20

dy

 

[T1936]

Sure is good to know I am not the only one who suffers from these little nuances....

Added

9) When using the offset tool, and several others, it defaults to "Chain". Would be nice to be able to set the default to "Single". I seem to offset more single lines than chains.

Printing to a PDF would be a HUGE godsend for us, we have to go through several workarounds in order to get PDF's from our drawings, which is something we do quite often.

donyoung - You seem to have some "inside information" on V20, are you involved professionally with SE?

 

[T1936]

Oh yes, now I recall another one....

10) Undo command dismisses the current tool. This one is a real pain, especially when you are in the middle of several operations and make a mistake. Clicking the undo command dismisses the tool you are working with, causing one to have to re-select the tool, which inevitably defaults to a the "Chain" option.... (see #9).

 

[T1936]

One more.... (as you might notice, I am in the middle of a drawing)

11) This is a biggie. When selecting a series of lines or objects, for example "select from sketch" when protruding an object, there is no unselect button. The only option when a something is selected in error, is the "X" button, which dismisses EVERYTHING, therefore one has to start over the selection process. Quite an oversight isn't it?

ok, back to the drawing.

 

[donyoung]

Hi,

[...]
You seem to have some "inside information" on V20, are you involved professionally with SE?
[...]

no, I'm not. This was one (more or less) official statement
after a lengthy debate within the UGS BBS just to silence
to audience ;-)

9) just simple --> remember the last setting either session
only or persistent. In the latter case it has to be stored
within the registry -- and there a a lot of items users might wish
to have the last setting remembered.
The downside would be (slightly) longer loading/switching times

10) I agree, it should just undo the operation but should
stay with the command.
There is also another pitfall (already mentioned in
another thread) ASM sketch to drive a pattern. Edit
the sketch and press UndoALL will leave you with the
sketch -- the patterned parts are gone :-(

Even worse for some deletions there is not Undo at all

 

[donyoung]

11)
in this case either press Shift or CTRL and reselect
the item -- it will become unselected

 

[T1936]

"11)
in this case either press Shift or CTRL and reselect
the item -- it will become unselected"

Well fer pete's sake, that is pretty obvious, no wonder I didn't think of it....

"9) just simple --> remember the last setting either session
only or persistent. In the latter case it has to be stored
within the registry -- and there a a lot of items users might wish to have the last setting remembered."

Is there a checkbox for this somewhere?

Thanks for the feedback....

-Tim

 

[donyoung]

Hi,

[...]
just simple --> remember the last setting either session
...
Is there a checkbox for this somewhere?
[...]

sorry for the irritation: no there is none. It was just
my suggestion for an improvement

dy

 

[T1936]

Darn.

 

[KENAT]

From a selfish point of view I almost hope SE doesn't get too polished while maintainging market comparable performance.

Reason: I'm my sections SE Guru, I was hired purely due to my SE skills and whilst I'd like to think I have now proven myself in many other areas it's still a major feather in my cap.

If SE got too easy to use I'd have to be a better Engineer


On topic they need to sort out a lot of the 'inteli sketch' options. As versions progress less and less of them seem to work as well as they used to.

Pre V14 I barely recal ever putting in constraints as a separate step, I could almost always get them from inteli sketch placement. On V17 & 18 I spend a lot more time putting in those constraints as inteli sketch wont work the way I remember it.

 

[onefjef]

[...]
7) drawing a line at an angle but the angle to be relative to another line like the line option ACAD (LT) offers
[...]

You can... if you have the parrallel feature of intellisketch turned on... pick start point of line, before second point hold cursor over line to measure angle from. Move away so the parrallel option shows. Look to top on angle entry box. Here is the base angle. You can click on this and add/subtract any angle from it.

jef

 

[donyoung]

jef,

I know of the possibility to add/subtract from the value
shown in the ribbonbar but that's not the way I would
like to work and is IMHO a 'clumsy' workaround compared
to what can be done easily in ACAD: just 'set and forget'

dy

 

[onefjef]

dy,

I did not mean to offend your SE skills but I was offering one of two ways that I saw to currently accomplish what you wish for. The other of course is to apply an angle relationship.

I too have a desire for this and many others. I should get into the spirit...

[12] Offset a profile through a selected point. Currently only allows a known distance as an entry.

pleasantly,
jef

 

[donyoung]

Jef,

with that '.. a 'clumsy' workaround compared' I do not mean
your suggestion to the missing function. This term is used
quite often when again one has to circumvent some shortcomings
in SE.
In ACAD you can set this option and continue to work without
any mental calculations.

12) is OK, it's needed quite often

dy

 

[Wicsteve]

I'd just be happy if I could convert a dft file to a dxf or dwg and be assured that whoever opens the exported file actually sees the geometric tolerancing symbols as they were created.

 

[jlbmech]

I would like to throw another area of complaint into the mix. I don't know how many of you use the Piping/Machine Library, but it has many issues.

1. Piping library only includes Sch'd pipe and buttweld fittings in metric sizes.

2. Frame Design is incapable of selecting which way you want a component brought in. Example: I can't tell it to point an odd leg length angle long leg down and short leg either left or right. Currently it brings it in how it feels like it and rotating it will not fix it.

Anyway there are many more, but I don't have time.
I have reported many of these problems to SE Tech and there typical response is an adder for a new release.

SE v18 SP7 WinXP SP2

 

[KENAT]

12. Retrieve dimension! It is really poor. First it should retrieve all dimensions not just those from sketches (I know it retrieves a few others but you get my point). 2nd the ability to move retrieved dimensions from one view to another rather than just deleting and creating new ones. (Much as I hate to say it, this was one kind of good thing about Pro E, down side was that manipulating dims in Pro E was awkward)